With oil prices down 60 per cent since last summer, some industry insiders are trying to talk up the market by predicting wild price spikes to come, brought on by insufficient investment in oil production. John Hofmeister, a former president of Royal Dutch Shell and head of the natural gas lobby group Citizens For Affordable Energy, is calling for $80-a-barrel oil by this summer . But that’s peanuts compared to the predictions of Claudio Descalzi, head of the Italian energy company Eni Spa. He sees oil “maybe” hitting $200 a barrel within a few years. Why? Because investment in oil production is collapsing, and it will take a long time to start up new projects if and when a supply crunch comes. At the World Economic Forum, Descalzi predicted capital spending on oil would drop 10 to 13 per cent this year. And many new oil projects take five […]